Yvette Charpentier
Yvette Charpentier | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1901 Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Died | 15 October 1976 (aged 74–75) |
| Occupations |
|
| Organization | International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) |
Yvette Charpentier (1901–1976) was a French-Canadian seamstress and labour organizer. She worked as a seamstress in Montreal from the age of 13, living in poverty. In 1937, she was the first garment worker at her factory to sign a union contract, and that same year she rallied thousands of workers on a 25-day strike. Charpentier helped to form a grievance committee and provided education for the female workers, and in 1945 was elected to the local executive board of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). When Charpentier retired in 1970, the newspapers called her "the godmother of 10,000 shop girls". She was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada for her work to improve the working conditions of women.
Early life
[edit]Yvette Charpentier was born in 1901,[1] the daughter of Alfred Charpentier and Celina Girard.[2] She started working at age 10, selling paper flowers and stirring chocolate, and in 1914 began factory work in the textile industry, called the rag trade.[1]
In the workshops on Saint Catherine Street,[3] Charpentier worked more than 60 hours a week for a meagre wage.[1] In her first eleven years of factory work, she was hospitalized three times for illnesses brought on by working and living conditions. She was regularly visited by hunger, exhaustion, the demands of foremen, and factory closings.[3][4]: 51 Charpentier stated, "Because of this degrading and vile system, I felt humiliated and devoid of any human worth."[5]: 11
Union activism
[edit]With the 1934 passing of the Arcand Act in Quebec, there was a structure for legally sanctioned collective agreements in the province's textile industry.[6]: 219 However, the manufacturers and their syndicates used ethnic prejudice to divide French Canadian workers from other workers, who were mostly Jewish and Jewish-led.[6]: 245 The New York-based International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU; French: l'Union Internationale des ouvriers du vêtement pour dames, UIOVD) entered the scene with a focused recruitment drive to attract workers and register a collective agreement with the government before the Catholic unions could do so.[6]: 245
In 1937, ILGWU organizers came to the factory Charpentier worked at and held a recruitment meeting.[4]: 51 Charpentier was initially wary of the unions: "Like most girls in the shops, I was suspicious, confused. After all, which of us knew the meaning of a union? To sign up with the union meant to be a pioneer and most people aren't interested in pioneering – particularly if it might cost them their bread and butter."[6]: 219
Charpentier asked the organizers:[4]: 51
Serez-vous capables, si nous adhérons à l'union, de mettre fin aux injustices que nous devons subir pour gagner notre vie?[4]: 51
If we join the union, will you be able to put an end to the injustices we have to endure to earn a living?
Her question was answered by Claude Jodoin, who promised to fight to see that such would never happen again. Charpentier noted this as the moment her life changed.[4]: 51 Emboldened by Jodoin's promise, Charpentier turned to the other women and declared:[5]: 17
Okay, vous autres, il faut nous décider: ou bien nous demeurons des esclaves ou bien nous devenons des femmes libres.[5]: 17
Okay, everyone, we have to decide: either we remain slaves, or we become free women.
Charpentier was the first garment worker at her factory, and the first in haut de la ville (uptown Montreal), to sign a union contract.[4]: 51 Her entire workshop followed her and joined the union.[5]: 17
The next morning, when her foreman tried his usual intimidation tactics, she rebuffed him and demanded her rights.[5]: 17 Resenting their continued denial of basic dignity, the women pushed the union to call for a strike[5]: 18 which began in mid-April 1937.[5]: 19
Ragpickers' Strike of 1937
[edit]The 25-day strike, called the grève de la guenille (Ragpickers' Strike), resulted in better working conditions, a 44-hour work week and a substantial pay increase.[1][7] The strike received a Canadian heritage designation in 2007 as a national historic event, noting Charpentier's leadership alongside that of Rose Pesotta and Léa Roback in rallying more than 5,000 female workers and demonstrating the ability of Jewish and French-Canadian workers to cooperate.[8] The strike was also notable for being the first action to defy the Padlock Law, provincial anti-Communist legislation which was used to persecute trade unionists.[7]
While the strike was successful in achieving the union leadership's demands, it failed to address the female workers' demands regarding sexual harassment by their superiors.[5]: 19–22 Despite the vast majority of ILGWU members being women, important positions in the union leadership were held by men and the union negotiators were disinterested in female empowerment.[9][10] Roback and Charpentier continued where the leadership had failed, forming a grievance committee and providing education for the female workers, to help them understand dignified working conditions.[5]: 23
Union executive
[edit]In 1945, Charpentier was elected to the ILGWU executive board. She later became head of the education department.[3][5]: 6
When she retired in 1970, the newspapers called her La Marraine de dix mille midinettes[a] (English: the godmother of 10,000 shop girls),[4]: 51 this being the estimated number of female garment workers who benefitted from the education classes she initiated.[4]: 52
Later life
[edit]On 31 March 1971, Charpentier was invested as a Officer of the Order of Canada for her lifelong work "to improve the working conditions of women in plants and factories."[11]
Charpentier died on 15 October 1976, in Montreal.[2]
Footnotes
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ↑ The term midinette, literally "midday dinner", was first used for the seamstresses of Paris who, when the clock struck noon, would flood the boulevards and parks to eat a few bites of food on the tiny lunch break allowed to them.[3] See definition on Wiktionary.
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 "De grandes figures du syndicalisme pour la Journée internationale des travailleurs" [Leading figures of the trade union movement for International Workers' Day]. Radio-Canada (in French). Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 30 April 2018. Archived from the original on 26 September 2026. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- 1 2 "décès - CHARPENTIER (Yvette)" [Deaths – Charpentier, Yvette]. La Presse (in French). 18 October 1976. p. D8. Archived from the original on 27 November 2018. Retrieved 27 November 2018 – via Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ).
- 1 2 3 4 "Yvettte Charpentier 1901–1976" (in French). Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ). Retrieved 23 November 2018.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Prévost, Robert (1985). Québécoises d'hier et d'aujourd'hui: profils de 275 femmes hors du commun [Quebec Women of Yesterday and Today: Profiles of 275 Extraordinary Women] (in French). Montréal: Stanké. pp. 51–52. ISBN 2760402614. Québécoises d'hier et d'aujourd'hui at the Internet Archive.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Dubreuil, Anne-Marie (January 2019). "Le corps dépossédé, le corps revendiqué, le corps tu : le corps comme enjeu de pouvoir dans la grève des ouvrières du vêtement pour dames, Montréal 1937". Revue Histoire, Idées, Sociétés (in French). Université du Québec à Montréal.
- 1 2 3 4 Steedman, Mercedes (1997). "After the Acts: Setting the Standards, Putting on the Pressure". Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry, 1890–1940. Canadian Social History Series. Toronto: Oxford University Press. p. 219, 245. ISBN 9781442609822. JSTOR 10.3138/j.ctt1287q8r.12.
- 1 2 "Déclenchement d'une grève par 5 000 ouvrières de l'industrie du vêtement" [5000 garment workers launch a strike]. Perspective Monde (in French). Université de Sherbrooke. Archived from the original on 3 February 2024. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
- ↑ "Montréal Dressmakers' Strike of 1937 National Historic Event". Directory of Federal Heritage Designations. Parks Canada. Archived from the original on 27 September 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
- ↑ Cobble, Dorothy Sue (1990). "Rethinking Troubled Relations between Women and Unions: Craft Unionism and Female Activism". Feminist Studies. 16 (3). doi:10.2307/3178018. ISSN 2153-3873. JSTOR 3178018.
- ↑ Phipps, Simone T. A.; Prieto, Leon C. (18 October 2014). "A Discovery of Early Labor Organizations and the Women who Advocated Work–Life Balance: An Ethical Perspective". Journal of Business Ethics. 134. Springer: 253. doi:10.1007/s10551-014-2428-9. Archived from the original on 15 September 2024. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
- ↑ "Mlle. Yvette Charpentier". Office of the Governor General of Canada. Archived from the original on 22 February 2025. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
Further reading
[edit]- Darsigny, Maryse; Descarries, Francine; Kurtzman, Lyne; Tardy, Évelyne (1994). Ces femmes qui ont bâti Montréal [These Women Who Built Montreal] (in French). Les Éditions du remue-ménage. pp. 230–231.
- Bantey, Edward (1962). Les Midinettes, 1937-1962. Montréal: International Ladies Garment Workers Union. pp. 17–19.
- Stoddart, Jennifer; Dumont, Micheline; Stanton-Jean, Michèle (1982). L'histoire des femmes au Québec: depuis quatre siècles [The History of Women in Quebec: Four Centuries] (in French). Montréal: Quinze. pp. 298, 371. ISBN 2890263096. L'histoire des femmes au Québec at the Internet Archive.
